


how's hope feeling today

by sleepinnude



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Beekeeping, Bees, Domesticity, Grief, Healing, M/M, MCD is Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25842187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepinnude/pseuds/sleepinnude
Summary: After Cas is gone, bees start to follow Dean.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 28
Kudos: 110





	how's hope feeling today

**Author's Note:**

> this wouldn't exist without the [beautiful art/concept](https://flowersforcas.tumblr.com/post/626124467709591552/au-where-after-castiel-passes-away-bees-start) from marlo. thanks for letting me run with it, babe.
> 
> title from "outro with bees" by neko case

Dean doesn’t notice until they’re running through a rakshaka case, months after. They’re in Montana and it’s well into January which means there shouldn’t be any bees around.

He ducks his head back from the buzz irritably, eyes narrowed. “Don’t these bitches hibernate?” he says hotly.

Sam is looking at him like maybe he’s insane. Dean expected him to just know about bees and their seasonal habits or whatever, like he always seems to just know things. Either way, Dean is pretty sure that bees aren’t supposed to be around in the winter.

The bee -- it’s one of the fuzzy kinds which he’s pretty sure means it doesn’t sting but still, there’s an instinctual kind of fear there -- just kind of dizzily floats near him for another moment before drifting off. Dean glares after it and Sam watches him do it and then they’re back to talking about how they’re gonna track the thing.

He doesn’t think about the bee until after they bunk up somewhere in Wyoming on the way back to the bunker. It’s an idle thought that enters his mind as he’s trying to sleep, wondering about the hibernation thing again. With sudden clarity so sharp it hurts, he thinks that Cas would have known. Cas would have known whether bees hibernate, what kind of bee that one was, why it might’ve been freezing its stinger off in Montana in January.

Dean smothers the gasp that rises through his chest into his pillow and forces himself to name prime numbers until he falls asleep.

*

It keeps happening.

Since blowing out the big bad, a lot of their cases are clean-ups -- lingering ghosts and ghouls or ancient things that have been walking the Earth since long before there were ever Winchesters or Campbells. There’s the rakshaka in Montana, wendigo in Minnesota and North Dakota, a slew of ghosts along the east coast and across Texas. At all their stopovers: bees. Through the snowy afternoons in the midwest and the dawning spring in the South, bees. They’re not dicks about it; they’re not, like, bees. For all that they seem to be following him or something, he doesn’t get stung once. They never dart or dive at him, just hum in close, to the crown of his head.

They swoop high around Sam too, but they’re definitely coming for Dean. It gets to where he can start to tell the difference: this one’s a bumblebee, this one’s a wasp, this one’s a honeybee, this one’s a carpenter bee. It doesn’t matter where they are or what the season is -- there’s an iridescent one that flickers close to his scarf for a whole day and when Sam looks it up he says it’s some kind of bee that’s supposed to only exist in South America.

After that, Sam starts researching, convinced that there’s “something hinky” going on. He starts bringing his laptop to Dean with “get this” on the tip of his tongue and factoids about bees at the ready. He talks about wasps and attack pheromones, eusocial behavior and male vs. female characteristics, climate change and homing spells.

Mostly, though, the hunts are thinning out. There are less and less news reports that catch on their feelers and more than enough other hunters to clear out the cobwebs.

Dean finds little clusters of brown and yellow bodies gathered at the door of bunker when he goes out on a supply run. While Sam researchers elemental witches and bee deities, Dean starts clicking around on DIY sites for any specs on how to build beehives. There’s a lot of advice on how to harvest or collect or buy your first hive, but Dean doesn’t suspect he’ll need any help there.

*

He’s always kind of known, probably. That’s likely why he was so disinterested in Sam’s poking and prodding. He just didn’t acknowledge it at the front of his mind, not since that motel in the middle of the night in Wyoming.

Then, one day, he’s leaning against Baby’s side after a tune-up (mostly just to have something to do). There’s been a little cloud of bees above her all morning, bobbing and floating while Dean worked. And then, one lands on the shell of his ear and he turns his head toward Baby’s hood and all he can see is Cas, or some measure of Cas, spread on his car and covered in bees. It had been distressing at the time, hilarious afterward, and now --

Dean huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. The bee dislodges, twirls, alights on his nose. Dean laughs again, keeps laughing. Bends at the waist and throws an arm out against his car to hold himself steady because he can’t stop laughing, he can’t stop seeing Cas’s face, that easy smile, the serenity, when he talked about watching the bees. 

When he put a hand to Dean’s cheek and told him not to worry, that it was okay, that he was ready and Dean would be fine, it would all be fine and then he was flickering away and there was nothing but the cool emptiness of the space where he had been. Nothing but a gaping void that loomed and buzzed through Dean’s chest.

It isn’t until Sam finds him, on his knees, and is asking what happened that Dean realizes he’s sobbing. He clutches hard at his brother’s shoulders and buries his face and cries in a way he hadn’t been able to in those lost moments, or when Jack waved and set off, or when Jody and Claire visited with condolences. Sam runs a hand through his hair and sighs like he’s been waiting for this. He lets Dean rock into the cradle of his arms and gasp out, “Fuck,” and “Goddamnit” and “It’s Cas, it’s him.”

*

They don’t really talk about it, but after that, Dean starts subscribing to real estate sites. He considers swaths of the country and ends up scrolling through beekeeping blogs for hours, weighing which region would be the best. He tells Sam to call Eileen. He tells Sam that he’s always, always welcome and he’ll never not want his little brother but he thinks that Sam might want something more. Sam makes that face that Dean has known since he was seven but he does call Eileen.

Dean gathers his fake identity and puts in calls around North Dakota and Oregon and North Carolina and Kentucky.

*

He ends up with a house, a wide-slung ranch with trees and a garden of flowers and vegetables and a tidy little round of hives in his backyard. There’s also a fire-pit and a hammock and one of those looming jungle-gym-swing-playset things for Sam and Eileen’s kid, and a garage so the winters don’t damage Baby and all of it, Dean built.

People in town know him as a widower with some kind of tragic past and that’s fine - it keeps people from asking too many questions. But they know him: Pam at the library and Stella at the county municipal building and Rob at the diner and Frank at the hardware store. They know him, they know the friendly giant that is his brother and Eileen and little Joanna (who happily tells anyone who will listen that she’s going to be a big sister soon) and their dog, Sender. They quickly get accustomed to the mutt who becomes his shadow (Dean names the thing Bunker as a joke but then it kind of sticks and Sam still laughs at the fact that he has a dog called Bunk).

His days are quiet and easy and he’s been thinking more and more about how that one bartender smiles at him sometimes. His mom has bees too, apparently, so he actually contributes when Dean gets chatty about his own hive. His eyes are pale hazel, shifting between grey and brown depending on the light, and sometimes Dean thinks that maybe you could even call them honey-colored.

*

When he tends to his hives, his bees are familiar. He’s never been stung in the years he’s kept them and his hive flourishes, but others come and visit still. They sit on his Rose of Sharon in the back corner and the fans of lilac against the garage and hum through the morning glories.

He goes out in the morning and drinks tea in the Adirondack chair he built and puts his bare feet up against the railing of his front porch and watches the sunrise. Later, Sam and Eileen and Jo and Sender are coming over -- he has to remember to get marshmallows because he promised his niece he would show her how to roast them. At his side, Bunker lets out a contented sigh, long muzzle pillowed on his paws.

Coming out of the pink morning sky, a bumblebee weaves into his vision. Dean can’t help the smile that passes his face, lets the ache that settles against his chest just live there for a moment. The bee lands on Bunker’s head and the dog’s eyes cant up. Dean watches. The bee rises and finally settles on Dean’s nose. “Hey, Cas,” he breathes out, calm and serene and at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> [rebloggable here!](https://sweatercas.tumblr.com/post/626161250951380992/au-where-after-castiel-passes-away-bees-start)


End file.
